
Catching Foxes
Luke and Gomer became friends Freshman year at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and 14 years later they started a podcast. The show oscillates between a conversation between just the two of us and interviews that we do together of other, fancier people. Sometimes we get explicit either by being too honest or by being too stupid. Either way, it's fun!
Latest episodes

Aug 29, 2023 • 1h 34min
Wait a Minute, this isn't Every Knee Shall Bow...right?
Guess who's here...it's Dave VanVickle!
Dave "Clubber Lang Gym for Men" VanVickle stops in to give us his thoughts on exorcisms and the morality of the UFC.Sponsored By:Catching Foxes Live Show61 Minutes to a Miracle: The True Story of a Family's Devotion: You'll absolutely love this insane and beautiful story of one family's devotion to Archbishop Fulton J Sheen!Support Catching FoxesLinks:Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thanks to Joe Coleman of Coleman Creates for producing this episode!The Catholic Truth About Angels, Demons, Ghosts — The longest website name possible, but worth checking out!Give Dave Some Money! — You probably get stuff for doing it. We aren't sure. You'll have to ask him.

Aug 22, 2023 • 1h 8min
Ten Minute Topics? On a Tuesday? Too Good to be True!
We're changing our upload schedule! Turns out people listen to more podcasts on Tuesdays than Fridays and we need that sweet, sweet ad money.
We've got a fun round of Ten Minute Topics for this one! Highlights include silverback gorillas, the Catholic imagination, and FHA loans. If that set of topics doesn't intrigue you, frankly, we don't know what will. See you next Tuesday!Sponsored By:Catching Foxes Live ShowSaintly AppSupport Catching FoxesLinks:Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thank you to Joe Coleman of Coleman Creates for producing this episode!Louise Perry - UnHerdSpiritual Passages: The Psychology of Spiritual Development by Benedict GroeschelWanna know more about FHA loans? Of course you do! — Even if Luke calls them FSA loans in the episode. Though, if you're a farmer, you should also check out FSA loans.

Aug 18, 2023 • 1h 2min
Defend Us in Battle: An Interview with Author Rose M. Rea
Luke and Gomer have Rose M. Rea on the show to talk about her book Defend Us in Battle: The True Story of MA2 Navy SEAL Medal of Honor Recipient Michael A. Monsoor. Of course, when you have three Franciscan grads in one place, the Mothership will also be talked about.Sponsored By:Saintly AppSupport Catching FoxesLinks:Buy Rose's Book! — Available everywhere you could think to purchase a book.Destroyer Michael Monsoor Commissioning Ceremony - YouTube — The following is the Jan. 26, 2019 commissioning ceremony of the Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyer USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001)Chaplain recruiter has been in line of fire - Archdiocese of Baltimore — Two months later, on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, Father Halladay overheard radio transmissions about a gravely wounded Navy SEAL, a man who had asked Father Halladay to hear his confession when they first met.
He raced to the First Aid station where medics worked desperately on Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, a member of a combined Navy Seal and Army sniper team.
The team was on the roof of a house engaged in a firefight when an unseen insurgent tossed a grenade to the roof. In a split second, Monsoor made the decision that cost him his life, throwing himself on the grenade before it exploded and saving the lives of two colleagues.
Father Halladay prayed with the mortally wounded Seal as medics loaded him on to a helicopter for evacuation. In 2007, Father Halladay was invited to the White House to witness President George W. Bush’s presentation of the Medal of Honor to Monsoor’s parents.Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thank you to Joe Coleman of Coleman Creates for producing this episode!

Aug 11, 2023 • 1h 11min
Love and (Ir)Responsibility? Ten Minute Topics!
Usually, we can blame Luke and Gomer for the late uploads. This time it's on Producer Joe. Whoopsie! We've got topics, though!
Luke and Gomer discuss fear of the Lord, how men and women can have proper friendship, and Luke's transformation into the Kanye West of Catholic podcasting.Sponsored By:Catching Foxes Live ShowSaintly AppSupport Catching FoxesLinks:Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thanks to Joe Coleman at Coleman Creates for producing this episode! Lex Fridman's Kanye West Interview — In case you didn't already see this, it's worth the 2.5 hours.Elliot Pannico — We have a pro athlete who listens to the show and a new favorite MLS team!

Aug 4, 2023 • 1h 35min
You Can't Monetize Private Pain
That thing Luke's been not so subtly hinting at? We talk about it in depth. Also, Barbenheimer makes its return, Cross Creek Tavern's origin story is revealed, and Producer Joe reaches for the bleep button frequently.Sponsored By:Catching Foxes Live ShowSupport Catching FoxesLinks:Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thanks to Joe Coleman at Coleman Creates for producing this episode! Dunbar's Number — British anthropologist Robin Dunbar makes the claim that we can only hold 150 relationships at any given point. Of those relationships, only five can be considered "loved ones," and only 15 can be considered "good friends."Jordan Howlett — In case you also wanted to appreciate this content.

Jul 28, 2023 • 1h 39min
Dr. Oppenheimer or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Watch Barbie
It's not too late to talk about Barbenheimer, right? Luke and Gomer rank Christopher Nolan movies, continue to discuss meta-modernism, and consider whether Barbie is actually a properly conservative film.Sponsored By:NET Ministries: Apply to be a missionary/ If you know someone who could serve to be a missionary, share with them about NET Catching Foxes Live ShowSaintly AppSupport Catching FoxesLinks:Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thanks to Joe Coleman at Coleman Creates for producing this episode! Barbie is a Conservative Movie, and We Can Prove it — You read that correctly

Jul 21, 2023 • 1h 3min
Man Cannot Live on Ironic Post-modernism Alone, or Why I'm so Sick of Anti-heroes
BONUS: Kateri Gormley, Gomer's oldest, joins us on the show to make fun of her dad for 10 minutes.
Top Gun: Maverick which Tom Cruise used to save movie theaters, is a welcomed change of pace, but also is out of place. YouTuber Thomas Flight breaks down Modern movies (High Noon), Postmodern movies (No Country for Old Men, Pulp Fiction) and Metamodern movies (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) to talk about this.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xEi8qg266g
Title: Why do Movies Feel So Different Now?
Tradition defined as the meta-narrative creating worldviews of religion and civilizations of yesteryear. Tradition, with its categories, roles, and super-stories, pull everyone and everything into an ordered and meaningful cosmos.
Modernism denies tradition’s ability to deal with reality as it is, drawing on science and reason for real progress. This was begun philosophically with Descartes and Bacon and others, but really becomes the cultural vibe starting in the late 1800s and continuing until World War 2, when the notion of progress blew up 2 cities in Japan.
Postmodernism realizes modernism buys into meta-narrative just as much as tradition, but in a different way, by supplying a non-religious meta-narrative. Post-modernism attacks moderism by attacking narrative itself, using deconstruction, irony, self-awareness, etc. We go about unmasking stories to find the will to power beneath. All meta-narratives are powerplays, attempts to manipulate and control the masses. The only way to be free, then, is to be undefined, un-storied.
Metamodernism is the art of the exhausted, world-weary response to post-modernist subversions, ironies, deconstructionism, that also knows that you can’t simply go back to modernism without feeling corny. So it embraces the deconstruction with an affirming sentiment in the heart-felt chaos. "Cherish these moments" even though these moments are meaningless. It is an oscillation between the delight in narrative and the seriousness of deconstruction and self-reflection. Back and forth, generating moments of delight or fun, knowing all the while it is fake, false, and meaningless. (See "Babylon" or "The Fablemen" or "Nope" that tries to mock that which unabashedly is).
This video by Thomas Flight does a great job in tying together previous conversations we have had about David Foster Wallace’s talk on the usefulness of irony (1950s and 1960s America) and when it becomes a deeply disturbing problem as it becomes the norm (1980s onward). We now get what post-modern movies are trying to do because they've been doing it for decades now, only with bigger budgets and with superheroes: "Ok, I get it, you’ve subverted my expectations yet again. Wow. But only you didn’t, because I knew you would do exactly that. I saw it coming".
Gomer's example is Amazon’s newest season of the Jack Ryan series. When the selfless friend and philanthropist, the head of W.H.O., turned out to actually be an off-the-charts drug-dealing, torturing psychopath, my wife and I were like, “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” It fell flat because it was more of the same plot-twisting nothing.
Another aspect of the rise of post-modernism and meta-modernism:
You know you're getting rich as an artist while real suffering is happening all around you and in the world, even in the lives of the people who love and watch your movies or enjoy your art. So, you draw attention to the process self-reflectively. You point out that, yeah, this is silly, but it’s fun. Maybe we can have fun together doing this. This is why there is a compulsion to stand up on stage at whatever awards ceremony and become an activist. You don't just thank your cast and crew, but must draw attention to the evils in the world around you and condemn them.Sponsored By:NET Ministries: Apply to be a missionary/ If you know someone who could serve to be a missionary, share with them about NET Support Catching FoxesLinks:Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thanks to Joe Coleman at Coleman Creates for producing this episode! Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now? - YouTube — In this video I dive into what Metamodernism is and what it looks like in film, and chart how the movies have evolved since their modernist origins.What is Wrong With Everybody? (The Alienated Creative Hero in Metamodern Intersectional Television) | by Greg Dember | WiM on Med | Medium — These characters very typically find themselves in situations where they need to ask of the universe “what is wrong with everybody?” and yet, as the audience, we can see that they, themselves, have a sizable package of flaws. Although these protagonists and the storylines they inhabit do a great deal of work representing the marginalized communities they belong to, the protagonists also insist on expressing their own unique interiorities, thus evincing a sort of metamodern intersectionality of community-based identitarianism and individualist quirky-ism.
What is Metamodern? A Catalog of Cultural Exemplars of Metamodernism — About This Website (and about metamodernism)
The central motivation of metamodernism is to protect interior, subjective felt experience from the ironic distance of postmodernism, the scientific reductionism of modernism, and the pre-personal inertia of tradition.
Greg Dember, 2018
Metamodernism . . . allows for individuals to (re)claim ownership of a breadth of human vicissitudes experientially felt to be real, and more so when they stand messily entangled rather than tidily sorted out.
Linda C. Ceriello, 2013
Metamodernism . . . oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity. Indeed, by oscillating to and fro or back and forth, the metamodern negotiates between the modern and the postmodern.
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, 2010Barbie’s surprising journey – Catholic World Report — A very flawed movie that begins with the sexless, over-sexualized, and impossibly perfect Barbie ends with that same Barbie making a perfect and unexpected visit.

Jul 14, 2023 • 1h 2min
Small Wins Add Up.
Gomer and Luke chat for 1 hour on the horribleness of getting into a rut, Luke's understanding of "strategy", the movie the Sound of Freedom, and Gomer asks a random biblical question: What happens if we delete John 6:4?Support Catching FoxesLinks:Bionic reading: could an ADHD-friendly hack turn me into a speed-reader? | Daniel Lavelle | The GuardianThe Perverted Critics of Sound of Freedom - YouTube — In this episode Trent looks at criticism of the recent film Sound of Freedom and shows how our culture is threatened when powerful, subtle truths threaten their cherished lies.
The Drinker Recommends... Sound of Freedom - YouTube — Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, is the low budget movie that somehow managed to knock Indiana Jones off the top spot. Its also a harrowing and compelling true story about a man's mission to combat child trafficking, and its excellent.Sound of Freedom - Movie Review - YouTube — A "dark horse" this week, and picking up steam. Sound of Freedom stars Jim Caviezel, and is based on the true story of Tim Ballard's sting operation against human traffickers. Here's my review of SOUND OF FREEDOM!

Jul 7, 2023 • 32min
How Do We End Things Well?
Gomer workshops his talks on his children (in between episodes of the mediocre Halo series) and Luke contemplates how to end his time at Notre Dame well.
Patreon merch is en route and it is glorious!Sponsored By:NET Ministries: Apply to be a missionary/ If you know someone who could serve to be a missionary, share with them about NET Support Catching FoxesLinks:Support Us on Patreon — You even get stuff for doing it, too!Coleman Creates — Thanks to Joe Coleman at Coleman Creates for producing this episode! Halo The Series (2022) | Official Trailer | Paramount+THE BEAR Trailer (2022) Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri

Jun 30, 2023 • 1h 3min
Are We Following Saints or Demigods?
Support Catching FoxesLinks:Darren Mooney on Twitter: "I mean, there is the issue of quality, artistic integrity and the idea that it's possible for a work of art to actually, y'know, end on its own terms. Nolan and Bale's steadfast refusal to cynically cash in on nostalgia just enriches those films even further." / Twitter